


Flight from New Delphi

by rhythmickorbit



Series: From Spark to Sky [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Aliens, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Blood and Violence, Doctors & Physicians, Enemies to Friends, Escape, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Hospitals, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied abuse, Injury, Kindness, Memory Loss, Plant Monsters, Plants, Platonic Relationships, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Villains, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22435711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhythmickorbit/pseuds/rhythmickorbit
Summary: Sunshift, Brightspecs, and Port arrive at the famed interspecies hospital known as "New Delphi". After meeting a figure from Port's past, the group is separated - discovering danger around every corner and digging up memories better left buried.(Before reading, make sure you read "The Battlefield" for context!)
Relationships: Original Cybertronian Character(s) & Original Cybertronian Character(s), Port (Transformers) & Sunshift (Transformers) & Brightspecs (Transformers), Scarlet Star (Transformers) & Port (Transformers)
Series: From Spark to Sky [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1504169
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brightspecs wakes up.

Brightspecs awoke to the steady hum of engines. Instinctively, his optic onlined in a panic, systems turning on all at once in a sudden, painful blip. He was on his way to the battlefield, to his death, with dozens and dozens of prisoners with less to lose, with less composure and far more murderous intent. The plant inside of him seemed to lunge forward, pulling at his spark chamber and smacking the inside of his chassis. 

He glanced around, panicked, until he saw Sunshift on the stool next to the berth, and heard the beeping of the monitor above him, sights and sounds grounding him in true reality. 

An orange blur flickered through his vision, before the sight of Sunshift’s red optics focused in front of his optic.

“You’re awake!” Sunshift chirped, uninjured wing waving excitedly. “I’m so glad that you didn’t die! I’ve had too positive of an impression of you!”

Brightspecs gently pushed her face away. “Thanks? I’m glad that I’m not dead, too.”

_“Poooooort! Put the clunker on autopilot and get over here!”_ Sunshift called, almost jumping up and down on her pedes. Brightspecs heard a muffled, grumpy response, and then the heavy gait of Port thumping down the hallway.

He poked his helm into the medbay. “Sunshift, we’re still half a cycle away from the— ah.” Port’s yellow gaze met Brightspecs’. “Good to see that you’re awake,” he said, entering the room fully. 

“We’re stopping at a hospital to get checked out, and also I’m hoping to meet some cool people! You can, too! And Port, but Port doesn’t like _anyone._ ” Sunshift chattered.

“...How long was I out?” Brightspecs’ vision swam.

“Three or four cycles! Or something like that. I recharged a lot too, don’t worry!”

“Recharging a lot for _you_ is barely half of a megaklik,” Port cycled his optics, exchanging an exasperated glance with Brightspecs, who clung to the berth for dear life as his vision spun for a second. The inside of his helm felt raw, painful, and the plant inside of him twitched.

Port held out a hand to steady Brightspecs. “We’re still several cycles off from New Delphi,” he warned. 

“New… Delphi?” something clicked with a half-remembered voice in the back of Brightspecs’ processor, but he couldn’t quite land a claw on it. “Is that where we’re going?”

Port raised an optic ridge. “You have a problem with that, empurata?”

“No,” Brightspecs said quickly, pushing aside the pain-adjacent feeling that the name caused. “I just… I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Sunshift, having disappeared for a moment, flounced back into the room with a half-full cube of energon. “It isn’t much, but we’re down to our last few rations,” she blinked down guiltily at Brightspecs, who took the cube in his claws.

“Thanks.” He glanced at his shipmates sheepishly. “Can you both… turn around, please?”

Both acquiesced, although Sunshift’s optics were filled with curiosity. Brightspecs let his frame relax, and poured the energon into the opening on the side of his intake-tube. The liquid splashed into his tanks in a discomforting way, making him shudder slightly. Despite that, the alerts warning him about being under-fueled all but disappeared from his vision. 

“You can look, now,” he said. Sunshift hopped back around to face him, and Port gave one more curt nod before disappearing back out of the medbay. 

“Do you feel better?” Sunshift lowered her voice a little bit. 

“I feel like my innards have been scooped out of my frame, but other than that? I am fantastic,” Brightspecs mumbled, tossing the empty cube from one claw to the other. The hum of the engines began to grate on his spark, making it spin in time with his anxiety.

“Understandable!” Sunshift’s voice was filled with more cheer than Brightspecs could ever muster up. “The ordeal left its mark on Port and me too… once we go to the hospital and to a real doctor you should feel a whole lot better! They definitely know what they’re doing, not just probably.” She puffed up her chest with confidence.

“I’m sure that I will.” Brightspecs pointedly ignored how the tendrils in his chassis slightly tightened around his spark. “Maybe they’ll figure out how to fix my… situation.”

Sunshift bobbed her helm up and down with enthusiasm. “Yes! And we can ask them all kinds of things, like proper medical protocol and the intricacies of tank transplants!”

“Um. Yes. That, too,” Brightspecs worried his claws together. The faintest recognition of the hospital’s name continued to prick at him, half-questions being formed before ultimately, maddeningly, dissipating. 

“What’s wrong, Specs?” Sunshift tilted her helm to the side, and her good wing raised with questioning behind her.

“Ah. Nothing… Sunshift, have you _heard_ of New Delphi before?”

“No, but I haven’t heard of a lot of things,” Sunshift dismissed it with a flick of her wing. “I never had much contact with the outside world when I was still living with my mentor. If I ever did, I forgot.”

“...Forgot?” Brightspecs’ optic flicked toward her, his helm tilted. “It seems to me like you remember, well, quite a lot.”

Sunshift let out a small laugh. “From stuff I read, yeah. Can’t remember anything before I woke up in front of my mentor, though.”

The account sent a small prickle of unease through Brightspecs’ armor, but he squashed the feeling down as best as he could. “I’ve forgotten some stuff, too,” Brightspecs admitted. “But. Um. I’m pretty sure it was _taken_ from me more than, you know, actually forgetting. ‘S part of the empurata thing.” He tapped on his helm for emphasis.

“Oh, yeah. Port said it was a punishment for something.” Sunshift’s optics squinted. “I don’t see how that’s reasonable or whatever. That one legal datapad that made me fall into recharge said something like ‘cruel and unusual’. I think that applies.”

“Um. Yeah, I guess,” Brightspecs absentmindedly ran one claw along the edge of his helm. “I did… commit a crime, though. Stole something really important.” The shard prodded his protoform, sending pain through his frame like a warning.

“Was it worth it?”

Brightspecs’ vent slowly, gradually cycled. “I don’t know.. I never got paid.” A small voice in his core insisted that no, it was not; it was injust and horrible and he wanted to look at his own face in the reflective chrome walls again instead of this flat, cycloptic face of a monster, but he violently squashed it down.

“Did you like committing crime?” Sunshift rocked back and forth on her pedes.

“Well. It was how I made money, so... I was good at it. I guess?” Brightspecs squinted at her in confusion.

Sunshift leaned in close and whispered in his audial. _“Let’s commit some crimes.”_

If Brightspecs had a mouth, it would have been wide open in shock. He stared at Sunshift incredulously. “Let’s do _what_ , now?”

Sunshift cycled her optics. “Duh, let’s commit some crime! On Port, specifically. We’re going to play a _really hilarious_ crime on him!”

“Sunshift, I don’t think that you’re using the correct term for this--”

“It’s _all_ the same.” Sunshift’s optics were aglow, the red depths dancing with mischief. Her good wing wiggled. “Besides, if you like committing crimes, maybe this will make your optic shine again!” She flicked his shoulder wheel in a friendly way.

“Is it a harmless ‘crime’?”

_“Obviously._ We can’t very well hurt Port! Nah, we’re just gonna mess with him.” She tilted her helm. “It should take the monotony out of travelling through _nothing._ You have no idea how boring it’s been while you were knocked out. There’s only so many times you can read the same datapads over and over again!”

Brightspecs’ optic flicked from Sunshift’s eager face to the piles upon piles of datapads stacked in the shelf across the room. “...No, I can’t imagine.”

Sunshift tugged at Brightspecs’ claw insistently. “C’mon, Specs! It’s the perfect way to check your physical condition. I have the perfect idea, _promise_! I won’t make you do anything too super crazy.”

Brightspecs sighed heavily, and scooted to the edge of the berth. He hopped to the floor, holding himself steady and upright using Sunshift’s leg. “What’s your plan, then?”

* * *

As soon as Port heard the medbay door slide open down the hall, he could immediately feel his frame start to tense. Sunshift skipped down the hall, her uninjured engine thrumming with energy as she hopped closer and closer to the cockpit.

Port set the ship on autopilot and swiveled around in his chair. Raising an optic ridge, he watched as Sunshift flounced into the room. The look of suppressed mischief in her eyes was nothing if not suspicious.

“Port, can you fix something for me?” she implored.

“What did you break this time?” Port said, voice flat in the manner of a ‘bot who had dealt with this one-too-many times.

“Uh. Secondary life support system?”

Port squinted. That was a lot to break, even for Sunshift. “How… how did you even manage that?”

Sunshift looked down at her hands and began to fiddle with her fingers. “Uh. Bumped into it? I was… testing the capabilities of my good wing.”

At least she had the decency to look  _ ashamed _ . Or, rather, as much as she could show any emotion other than  _ happy  _ and  _ overly optimistic  _ and  _ annoying.  _ Port rubbed his nasal ridge in exasperation. “How bad is it?”

“Part of it is dented and it won’t turn on! I figured that someone who made an ion blaster out of an engine could handle that.”

Port cycled his optics in a long-suffering way. “Fine. Lead the way,” he grumbled and slowly got up out of his chair. His spinal struts popped in protest, and he winced. Sunshift grabbed his hand in that needy way of hers, and Port glared down at her. “Without touching me,” he added.

Sunshift’s uninjured wing drooped, but she hopped out of the cockpit without further comment. “Specs is picking which of the last two habsuites he wants,” she explained as they made their way to the medbay. 

Port grunted in reply, and glanced around the space. He had to admit to himself that Sunshift had really made the space into her own-- she had rearranged the cots and hung the medical equipment back on the walls, and the place was fairly free of rust, compared to how it had been when she first claimed this space.

He would have felt more impressed if she didn’t break everything that she touched. Port swiveled his helm, looking about the room for the life support system that she broke. “Where is it?”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t break it, after all!” Sunshift chirped, pointing to the apparently fully functional screen on the wall. “Oops! Sorry, Port!” Her optics were far too bright.

Port cycled his optics. “Next time you drag me from the cockpit,” He growled. “It had better be for something  _ important. _ ”

“Will do, captain!”

Port turned before he could see Sunshift’s expression, but he just  _ knew _ that she was doing that fake salute to antagonize him. His vents huffed with frustration, and he limped back to the cockpit, in a significantly worse mood than when he had left.

He entered and was immediately struck by the lack of a display of the stars outside. Instead, displayed on the damaged screen in all of its low-quality glory was a blurry photograph of Sunshift’s face, with a more in-focus Brightspecs sharing the left half of the screen. His optic was shaped like a half-moon, sheepishly staring at the viewer, while all of Sunshift’s unfocused energy projected in the blurry lines of her limbs.

How did she even  _ do  _ this? The question replayed itself in his mind as he stared at the display. He wasn’t even aware that the display could be reprogrammed remotely.

In the hall, Port could hear Sunshift’s high-pitched giggling. “He saw it! Come out of the vents!”

“Oof!” Echoing through the vent system above, Port heard thrashing limbs as Brightspecs squirmed his way out of the small space. “Those aren’t big enough for minibots,” he complained. “Uh. Might be a few dents in there. Sorry, Port!” he called down the hall, voice threaded through with anxiety.

Sunshift’s cackling was unceasing, but Port didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “It’s repairable,” he called back, never turning his helm. 

The laughter ceased. “We did bad,” Port heard Sunshift murmur to Brightspecs, and he heard them shuffle back over to the medbay.

Only when he was sure that they couldn’t see him did Port allow his intake to curve upward. It was an easy enough fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO
> 
> I've been working on this monster for the past three months or so. After I finish posting this, I'm taking a break from these characters for a while because PHEW did this take a lot out of me!!! Nonetheless I really hope you like it, however you ended up finding my silly continuity. I'm working on IOY's outline, as well as finishing up Axes Crossed. Now that I don't have to do this for an actual class, I should find it within me to achieve those goals
> 
> ...if playing stardew valley and hollow knight in my spare time don't get in the way. Heh.
> 
> But either way! If you like my work, consider giving me a comment and a follow on twitter @rhythmickorbit. I post robot and DnD content most of the time and shout about my faves


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group meets someone from Port's past.

“Specs!” Sunshift shook Brightspecs as hard as she could without breaking him. “Specs, we’re here! We’ve arrived at New Delphi! Get up so we can get your healing on!”

Sunshift pouted as Specs let out a low, long-suffering groan. “I’m  _ never _ going to get enough recharge to heal properly,” he said. “If you keep waking me up like this I’ll  _ never _ function properly.” He flopped one of his arms over the side of the berth.

“Nooooo, that’s not true!” Sunshift whined. “I’m your  _ medic,  _ and  _ I  _ say that you’ve got a  _ dozen _ megakliks of uninterrupted recharge under your greedy claws! Come on! Get up or Port’s gonna  _ leave us  _ and  _ shut us in! _ ”

“Two more nanokliks, Sun.”

_ “No!” _ Sunshift scowled down at him, and easily scooped Brightspecs into her arms. He yelped in surprise and began to wriggle in her grasp. Sunshift simply tightened her arms.

“You need to stop doing this!” his vocals were punctuated by staticky laughter.

“I wouldn’t have to if you would listen to your medic!” Sunshift skipped out of the medbay and into the hall. Port, standing in his full, arthritic glory, glared at them.

“Be professional,” he snapped. “We’re entering a highly prestigious institution.”

“You’re  _ boring _ , Port,” Sunshift groused, her complaint almost simultaneous with Brightspecs’ rueful “Sorry.” She placed him gently on the ground, back on his pedes. Brightspecs straightened, appearing to be making an attempt to regain his dignity.

“I don’t think that it’s too much to ask for you to restrain yourself from picking up other mecha,” Port side-eyed her while he typed a code into the keypad next to the hatch.

“They’re  _ doctors, _ ” Sunshift chirped. “I’m sure that they aren’t nearly as boring as you, rusty-limbs.” The hatch shuddered open before the trio, squeaking and complaining as it rose. Port winced at the sound and carefully stepped onto the ramp as it spiraled open. He limped out of the ship.

Sunshift and Brightspecs exchanged a glance, but followed him. Upon reaching the outside, Sunshift’s optics widened in awe. 

The landing bay was filled with  _ so many _ different ships, with an equally diverse population of individuals walking toward the hospital, which loomed up ahead. There was a dome around the entire expanse, casting blue reflections from where the sun shone through on occasion. Ships occasionally orbited by, likely waiting for the control tower to let them in, the structure of which spiraled upward from the blocky architecture of the buildings all around them. Sunshift stared as a small group, consisting of a large grounder, a smaller, furry organic of indeterminate origin and a  _ human _ walked past, bickering naturally and snorting in laughter. The cybertronian carried the organics in his palm.

Sunshift started toward them, but Port gripped her arm to keep her from going any further.

“We’re meeting the liaison over there.” Port jerked his helm in  _ the exact opposite direction  _ of the hospital. Sunshift’s wings drooped but immediately perked back up.

“Liaison? You mean we’re going to talk to a bonafide real true doctor?” She bounced in place before skipping after Port as he walked away. Who cared about that motley group behind them when a bonafide real true doctor was within arm’s reach?

“They’re a nurse, technically,” Port grunted. “But yes.”

“Why didn’t you let me talk to them via comm? I have  _ so many burning questions. _ ”

“If I let you talk to the liaison, we wouldn’t even be here right now.”

“Port,” Brightspecs piped up, “how do you even know someone that works here? Have you been here before?”

“Knew them during the war. Been here twice. The second time was to transport a client who was visiting his amica endura.”

“Why’d you come here the first time?” Sunshift ventured.

Port stopped in place. “Hello, Scarlet Star,” he greeted the bulky mecha with white and red armor in front of him. Intricate designs were painted along the mecha’s arms, which were crossed in front of their chassis.

The mecha, who Sunshift assumed was the liaison, inclined their helm. “Port. You have another bout of engex poisoning?”

Brightspecs let out a snort. Port, ignoring him, shook his helm. “No. The flightframe needs her wing patched up, and the minibot needs… examined.”

“Um, Port? What about your leg? And your optic?” Sunshift piped up.

Scarlet Star smirked. “Port ain’t ever going to fix those. Even if someone paid him.”

“Why?” 

“That’s enough of that.” Port fixed Scarlet Star with a steely glare. “Just take us inside of the building, Star.”

“Okay, okay,” Scarlet Star put their hands up in mock-surrender. “Follow me then, grumpy struts.”

Sunshift hopped to Scarlet Star’s side. “Hi! I’m Sunshift! I’m an unlicensed doctor!” 

“Good to meet you, doc,” they replied, voice tinged with amusement. “You Port’s nursebot then?” Port shot them a glare in response to that.

“No! Port’s taking me faaaaar away from a lab that I used to work at, and everyone there wasn’t nice  _ at all! _ But then we went through a space bridge and got launched to an old battlefield planet, and then there were a bunch of old plant zombies, and we found  _ Brightspecs _ ,” She pointed wildly at the said minibot, “in an old shuttle and it was so crazy, do you want to hear about it in excruciating detail, with hilarious asides and various tangents?”

“I don’t think that they do—” Port began to say.

“I would  _ love to _ ,” Scarlet Star cut him off, shooting Sunshift a grin. “Please, tell me  _ everything _ !”

Sunshift launched into a dramatic retelling of their previous voyage, with plenty of pointed descriptions of how grumpy Port was. She continued, with Brightspecs interjecting his own comments every now and then, all the way to the hospital’s entrance. A small line of various organisms, including a couple of Cybertronians, trailed a short distance out of the front entrance. Scarlet Star nodded occasionally as Sunshift spoke, to indicate that they were still listening. On her part, Sunshift’s helm whipped back and forth as she stared at the waiting patients, optics bright with fascination as she talked.

Port dragged Sunshift away from the gaggle of people by her wing, eliciting a whine of protest.

“It was  _ your  _ idea to come to a hospital in the first place,” Port hissed. “I want to make this as quick as possible.”

Sunshift glared at him in return. “Okay, okay! Don’t touch my wing.”

“It isn’t very kind to do that, Port,” Scarlet Star added.

“Stay out of this, Star.” Port glared at the nurse with poison in his optics.

Scarlet Star held up their hands. “I would watch your vocalizer around me, Port,” they said softly. “Remember, I’m doing this as a favor.”

Port rubbed his nasal ridge. “Fine.” Sunshift noted how his jaw tightened.  _ “Fine.”  _

__ Sunshift’s wings twitched uncertainly as she looked from one bot to the other. Before anymore could be said, Scarlet Star turned around, gesturing for the group to follow them with one hand. They dodged the main entrance, to Sunshift’s disappointment. Instead, they went around to the back of the building. Gradually, the impeccable and shiny appearance of the building’s front gave way to a rougher, slightly rusted exterior. Crates of different materials were stacked along the back, the piles forming comfy-looking alcoves around which were empty energon cubes, packets labeled as different types of organic fuel, and detritus of all kinds. It was inside one of these alcoves, right in front of a pair of sliding doors, where several other red and white mecha were lounging about. One raised an optic ridge at Scarlet Star, skepticism etched into her optics as she stared at the motley group.

“Someone call in a favor?” asked the medical bot.

Scarlet Star shrugged. “You could say that. Just don’t tell First Aid.” They approached the sliding door, over which was the sign marked “Employees Only” in several thousand languages.

Another bot shook his head, and tilted his energon cube back into his intake. “Aid’ll find out no matter what you do. Bot has optics everywhere.” 

“Yeah, careful, Star! Yer on thin ice already!” A smaller one added. The others tittered in amusement as Scarlet Star let out a snort. 

“Sure, sure. Go back to your energon, you scrap heaps.” They waved a hand dismissively and pulled a thin slab of metal out of their subspace. The sensor above the physical door reacted to the object, scanning it with a swath of red light. The doors slid open easily, and Scarlet Star strode inside. Port, Brightspecs and Sunshift followed, albeit with more hesitance than the one walking in front of them. 

The doors slid shut, concealing the amused optics of the mecha outside. Sunshift swung her gaze back ahead of herself. Excitement roiled in her spark, and she had to force down the urge to let her wings hum with the rhythm of her emotions. There wasn’t any point in exacerbating her injury, Sunshift reminded herself. Instead, she turned her attention back to Scarlet Star, who navigated the halls with the ease of someone who has worked in the facility for orns.

“Star, who’s First Aid?” she asked.

Scarlet Star shrugged. “Head doctor here. He’s not the biggest fan of breaching protocol, but…” they glanced around cautiously. “I mean. With his history, he doesn’t have any room to talk.”

“Can I meet him?” Sunshift’s optics brightened. 

“No,” Scarlet Star said shortly. “If he finds out that I’m doing this for you, he’ll put me on probation for the rest of time. And possibly longer.”

Port snorted. “’S as much as you deserve,” he muttered, a dark edge to his voice. A spiral of curiosity unfurled in the back of Sunshift’s processor, and she looked at Port.

Scarlet Star pointedly ignored him, and they turned another corner. With several  _ very long  _ kliks of silence, eventually Star stopped at a door. They typed a code into the keypad next to the door, and it slid open easily. The group crowded into the room.

It looked oddly similar to the medbay on their ship, Sunshift noted. She recognized the scanner on the wall, and the look of a medical berth. This room was meant for examinations, rather than surgery or extended care. A wave of pride washed through her spark at her recognition—those datapads  _ were _ helping! She was learning things! How exciting!

“I can take a look at your wing, first,” the nurse offered, turning to Sunshift. She hopped onto the berth without further comment and kicked her pedes back and forth as she looked at Scarlet Star expectantly. The medical bot, with methodical and almost automatic movement, gently examined Sunshift’s wing, their fingers brushing against the lesion where an engine once was. Sunshift winced slightly.

“Not much I can do about the engine, without finding a replacement,” Scarlet Star’s optics were apologetic. “I can help close up those lesions, first, though.” Their optics squinted slightly as they examined the wound.

“What is it?” Sunshift angled her wing with concern. “You’re looking at it weird. Is it infected? I don’t think it is, I scanned for diseases and stuff before we came here--”

“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just… you have blue energon.”

“Yeah, so?”

Scarlet Star dipped a small square of fabric into a bottle labeled as  _ Disinfectant _ . “So… you’re from Caminus. We don’t get many Camiens here. They prefer less… scientific means to heal themselves, much of the time.”

“Oh.” Sunshift winced as the nurse daubed at her wing with the mesh. “Yeah. Of course. I knew that, most definitely. I guess I’m just different... That’s just me, wacky, wacky Sunshift!” She laughed nervously, pushing away just how familiar the planet’s name sounded to her audials, and sat just right beside her spark. It sounded like home, though she could not recall ever hearing it before.

Scarlet Star looked Sunshift up and down before speaking. “ Hm. The metal around the wound will surely heal soon. You’ve been doing well in keeping your wound clean, despite the ragged edge. We could find another engine for you, but it will take more effort on my part to smuggle one out.”

“Oh, no, no, I understand! I won’t really need to fly, anyway, where I’m going.”

Scarlet Star gave a small smile. “I see. May I take a look at the smaller one, now?”

Sunshift nodded in understanding, and hopped off of the berth in order to make way for Brightspecs. She helped him up, giving him a platform with her hand to step off of in order to better reach the high perch.

“You ought to scan his internals,” Sunshift spoke up.

Scarlet Star unhooked a scanner from the wall, and switched it on. It hummed as they looked Brightspecs up and down.

“Standard empurata,” they said. “You never got your hands and helm replaced?” Their optics swept over Brightspecs in a way that made Sunshift distinctly uncomfortable, although she couldn’t pinpoint why.

Brightspecs ducked his helm. “Um. No, couldn’t. I was stuck on an abandoned battlefield for, um, a really long time.” He fixed his quivering optic on the scanner.

“Ah, that’s a shame. If you were able to stay here longer, we could probably find a good match to your old helm and…” they shrugged. “We’ve certainly dealt with our share of empurata surgeries. It’s not an  _ easy  _ fix, per se, but it certainly isn’t out of the question. Think about it when you have the time.” Scarlet Star ran the scanner over Brightspecs’ frame, humming an unfamiliar tune under their breath as they did so. Brightspecs, on his part, seemed to be just barely holding back from squirming.

Sunshift glanced at Port, who stared at the wall without any discernible expression. His jaw-plate was tensed, and his hand clenched and unclenched slowly, deliberately, as if he were resisting the urge to punch through the wall. Hypothetically. He looked very mad at it. Sunshift poked his arm softly.

“Port, are you okay?” she whispered, so as to not disturb Scarlet Star’s process.

Port’s working optic flicked toward her. “Yeah. I’m fine,” he muttered.

“Okay. Don’t punch through the wall.”

“Why, in the name of Primus, would I do that?”

“The anger in your optic indicates that you want to punch through the wall and dissolve the pieces into a cube of your gross engex.”

“I’ll put it this way,” Port huffed, cycling his optic with exasperation. “I don’t like hospitals.” He paused. “I  _ really  _ don’t like hospitals.”

“Oh.” Curiosity pricked Sunshift’s processor. “Why? Hospitals are awesome! They help people, and I’ve wanted to work at one ever since I read about them in my ‘The Life of Doctors’ datapad yesterday, which is a really engaging read, we should talk about it sometime—”

A shriek shot through the air, and the two whipped around toward Specs and Scarlet Star. The former had fallen off of the examination table, and lay on the floor shaking in a heap. The latter stood above him with a scanner, looking perplexed and intrigued all at the same time.

“What the frag just happened?” Port demanded, rising from his chair at a speed that Sunshift didn’t think was possible, with his crippled frame. His working optic was fixated on Scarlet Star with a hard glare, to which the nurse simply shrugged.

“I was scanning his frame, to make sure of his internals, when he just collapsed,” they said.

“It’s… it’s fine, I guess. I’m fine,” Brightspecs mumbled against the floor, still shivering. “Something just… reacted to the scanner, that’s all. I’m okay.”

“Oh, so that’s what would have happened if I used it on you,” Sunshift whispered, holding a hand out in order to help Brightspecs stand up. “Glad we didn’t test that when you were close to dying.”

“I feel like I’m close to dying now,” Brightspecs whispered back, using her arm for leverage as he got to his pedes.

“You know,” Scarlet Star said, glancing at the scanner. “This thing must be malfunctioning. It sensed organic matter, which… clearly isn’t there.”

“No, there is!” The words came out before Sunshift could stop them. “There’s a  _ whole plant  _ growing inside of Specs, and the scanner probably hurt it in some way! We probably shouldn’t do that again, but yeah Specs should be dead but the organic melded his frame back together! Isn’t that fascinating?”   
Scarlet Star stared at her-- not with disbelief, but with an  _ interest _ that sent a shiver down Sunshift’s spinal strut. She reminded herself that the nurse was on  _ their  _ side-- they had offered free help, after all, like all good doctors do!

“A plant… in his frame?” Scarlet Star’s optics flicked toward Brightspecs.

Brightspecs’ claws dug into Sunshift’s arm where he was still holding it. She could vaguely feel the armor dent underneath of his tight, terrified grip.

“Hm,” Scarlet Star smiled softly. “If you’ll excuse me, I just got a comm for a medical situation on the third floor. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” They pushed past the other mecha and exited the examination room. A click resounded through the space as the door locked behind them.

“I… am not a fan of that,” Brightspecs mumbled. “Why did they leave so quickly?”

“Maybe they have a specialized doctor!” Sunshift chirped. “Like… a plant doctor? We should wait for them to come back!”

Port shook his helm, his intake quirked downward. “No. We’re leaving,” he muttered, using the wall for leverage as he stood. “Take what you want, Sunshift. We’ll need it on the ship.”

“Huh? Um, that’s stealing. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal--”

“Just do it,” Port snapped. “I’m going to find a way out of here. Brightspecs, you said that you were a thief, right?” The addressed party nodded. “Well. You ever escape from a tight spot like this?”

“Never a hospital,” Brightspecs squeaked out. “Mostly just… the homes of rich monoformers. I mean, I did steal from a museum once, but…”

“Pretend that this is a really boring museum, then.” Port examined the optic-scanner on the door, and punched it. The door, in turn, sputtered with a faint, static-like sound. Port jammed his fingers into the seams lining it, and pulled. He winced as his joints groaned in the process, but he pulled the door open, despite the strain.

Sunshift looked wildly around the room, and grabbed a random selection of bottles and packages which she then shoved into her subspace. Port gestured at her and Brightspecs, and the three squeezed out of the room with little difficulty. Port grit his teeth as he limped into the hallway.

“This damn place is like a maze,” he growled, looking up and down the corridor with a frustrated gaze. “What do you suggest that we do, Brightspecs?”

Brightspecs ran one claw along the wall. “Normally, before heists, we-- I mean, I studied maps for weeks to learn every possible escape route. But… here, I think…” he swung his helm, studying the space. “We have to figure out where the public places are. Either that, or we ought to disguise ourselves as medical bots, and, um, that could be trouble, if we get pulled into a situation. Like, surgery, or something.”

“I could disguise myself as a doctor,” Sunshift piped up. “I can perform surgery!”

“We’re not risking that,” Port interjected. “We’ll do what Brightspecs suggested, and we’re going to get out of here. It was a mistake to come here in the first place.”

“Why?” Sunshift followed him as Port limped down the hall with an urgency she didn’t know he had.

Port sighed heavily. “Brightspecs is… some kind of anomaly, with the whole plant business. If I know anything about Star and the people that they associate with,” he spat. “It’s that they are  _ quite  _ interested in anomalies.”

Brightspecs’ vents shuddered slightly. “Okay. Okay, so. We’ll get out of here as soon as possible, then.”

“Couldn’t we tell some of the other Hospital staff about the situation?” Sunshift suggested. “They might not be with Scarlet Star in that regard.”

Port shook his helm. “No,” he said firmly. “No, they’re all the same-- they care about furthering the so-called ‘greater good’, not actually helping individuals.” He swiveled his gaze from one side to the other.

“I recall that we came in from the right,” Brightspecs pointed in the opposite direction. “So, we should go that way.”

“Will do.” Port grabbed Sunshift’s arm and pulled her him as he limped according to Brightspecs’ advice. “You will not stop to look at anything,” he muttered at her, sending a shudder of frustration through Sunshift’s circuits. “We don’t have time to look at every mecha and organism that we pass by.”

“There’s  _ always _ time,” Sunshift complained. 

“Not when you are running from the whims of a half-sane nurse.”

Sunshift cycled her optics in exasperation, but followed his lead nonetheless. Brightspecs skittered ahead, stopping at every corner to peer around it before gesturing to Sunshift and Port that it was okay to continue.

The silence of the hallways sent a shiver up Sunshift’s spinal strut. It wasn’t the comfortable quiet of Port’s ship, occasionally interspersed by quiet venting and the hum of unsteady engines-- no, this quiet was far more similar to that at Chargerender’s lab. Sunshift found her mind wandering, slowly creeping toward the memories of eerily quiet halls and the singular, echoing footsteps. She clenched her jaw tightly. 

With each passing second, Sunshift remembered the glazed-over optics of the other doctors there. She remembered the fuzzy blankness of her own processor, the recollection sending a shiver through her wings. She winced slightly as her injured wing quivered in an almost automatic fashion.

Sunshift had to admit to herself that the hospital had been far more comforting as a concept, and when someone had been there to lead them. She’d imagined it as a more crowded, more lively setting—somewhere healing.

Not this place of twisting back-hallways and silence.

Jerked out of her thoughts, Sunshift felt a sudden, smacking pain ripple through her face plates. She reached out a hand, optics still unfocused, and felt cold metal. She blinked.

“Oh, sorry, Port,” she mumbled, looking up. Sunshift’s optics widened slightly when she was face to face with a chrome wall, reflecting her orange-hued visage. Violet and green frames were nowhere to be seen as she turned her helm from one side to the other. “Are you hiding?” she called out, voice bouncing off of the walls in a way that made her shiver.

Sunshift’s wings drooped. Port wouldn’t leave her here, would he? He wouldn’t leave her to wander the hospital by herself. Definitely not. 

She swept her gaze up and down the hallway once more, before turning her attention to the reflection in the wall. Sunshift hadn’t looked at her reflection in a very long time—or, at least, that’s what it felt like. The sight only intensified the uneasiness roiling in the pits of her tanks. She shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, and the reflection did the same thing.

Sunshift hadn’t imagined her frame to be so, well, plain.

The chrome walls at Chargerender’s were not nearly as clean as these. They were rusted, although the degree to which the detritus was layered varied depending on how used the hallway was. All Sunshift had been able to see in those walls was a silhouette, vague and blurry. She hadn’t been able to fully examine her figure, how her faceplates looked. 

Port and Brightspecs would come for her soon, she knew it. In the meantime, Sunshift gave into the impulse to get to know her reflection better. It felt as if it were that of a stranger, and something strained in the back of her processor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Scarlet Star's backstory is actually my fave to write :3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Port realizes that he's missing something. He goes to look for it.

Port followed Brightspecs’ frantic movements as quickly as he could, trying to keep his uneven gait from thumping on the floor too loudly. Compared to the quiet footsteps of his companions, his own felt ungainly, loud. Sound echoed easily in these halls, the effect only heightened by their own anxieties.

Brightspecs eventually stopped dead in front of a large door, next to which was a hole where a keypad would have been. He glanced back at Port nervously.

“Someone’s trying to keep us in,” Brightspecs squeaked.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The door is probably just broken down,” Port grumbled, pushing down the sense of unease that square-shaped cavity sent through his frame. Port paused, waiting for Sunshift to put her two shanix in, however unwanted the comment was.

That comment never came. Port stiffened. He glanced back, only to find an empty hallway behind himself. Something heavy and dreadful clamped down in the area next to his spark.

“Brightspecs,” Port said. “Did you see where Sunshift went?”

The minibot shook his helm, optic blown up wide in anxiety. “No, I didn’t… Did you?”

“Wouldn’t have asked if I did.” Port frowned. “Sunshift,” he called. “We don’t have time for you to play games.”

The silence through the hallway was more chilling than anything that could have been said. Port exchanged a glance with Brightspecs before making the decision.

“Stay here,” Port grunted. “I’m going to look for our idiotic doctor.”

“You’re just… gonna leave me here?” Brightspecs’ optic rounded with alarm, voice raised into a squeak. “What if someone finds me?”

“You’re more mobile than Sunshift and I combined right now,” Port snapped. “For Primus’ sake, you hid inside of the ventilation units back on the ship. I think you could do the same here.”

“That… that was different! Don’t leave me here alone,” Brightspecs’ claws wrung together. “I don’t think I can climb up anywhere without a boost—”

“Figure it out,” Port glared down at him. “You’re part of the reason that we’re stuck in this mess in the first place, you know.”

Brightspecs began to protest again, but Port blocked out the pathetic whimpering as he limped back toward where they all came. His hands clenched as a wave of intense anger washed over his frame. The minibot had no reason to be such a coward. For the briefest of moments, Port rolled around the idea of simply leaving the two other mecha at this hospital, where he was bound to never see them again.

Something akin to disgust rejected the idea outright. Port cycled his optic in exasperation. He had to at least get these two to that way-station that he had promised—it was all in the agreement that he had with Sunshift.

Where was she? Port turned his helm this way and that, scanning the shiny, chrome expanse for a flash of orange. For all he knew, she could have gotten distracted by her own reflection. He wouldn’t have been surprised by that, for certain.

Port, admittedly, felt disconcerted by the looming silence. He had been in this wing of the hospital before—it was a small cluster of examination rooms, meant for check-ups for both mechanical and organic life forms alike. He had never seen it this empty, though the hospital had expanded a lot since he had last been here. Scarlet Star, with their cunning smile, had tricked Port into letting them give him a checkup. What a nuisance. Ever since their time on the same ship together, Port was constantly under scrutiny by the nurse every time he was here—which was twice. He set his jaw. It wasn’t pleasant to be under the surveillance of a doctor, that much he knew. 

Nonetheless, something didn’t feel right about this area. He didn’t recall it being marked “employees only” before—that label had mainly been restricted to operation rooms and laboratories.

Port, deep in his thoughts, realized that he had been walking for, well—his chronometer, however damaged it was, indicated that it had been at least half of a megaklik. Port frowned, and looked about. These examination rooms were darkened, the lights completely turned out rather than dimmed, as was the hospital’s custom. Something deep within Port’s spark began to regret leaving Brightspecs alone.

Port furrowed his optic ridges, and put one hand on the chrome wall to steady himself. He couldn’t sense Sunshift’s comm frequency anywhere near this area, although he knew she kept it foolishly open. If that medic wasn’t here, then where was she? Port glanced at his reflection, briefly, and was met with the face of a far younger, though scarred, mech than he expected.

He hadn’t looked at his reflection for a very, very long time.

Something jerked him out of his thoughts—the tapping gait of a mecha down the hall. Port’s audials perked up, and he tore his gaze from the traitorous reflection on the walls. He limped toward the noise.

“Hello?” he called gruffly, foolishly—what if it was Scarlet Star, or a doctor? “Sunshift, is that you?”

The quiet, clanking sound, never ceasing, grew louder. Port’s intake twitched downward. If that was Sunshift, she was being oddly quiet. Rather than call out again, Port simply continued his progress to the end of the hallway.

He peered around the corner. Shuffling down the hall was a red and white medical frame—not Scarlet Star, but a different individual painted in the customary medical staff colors. The mecha walked aimlessly, starting in one direction and then the other. The lumbering, unsteady gait send a churning, sickening feeling through Port’s tanks. His vents took in a rush of air to cool down his overheating, panicking frame.

Then, the mecha turned toward Port, only confirming the fears gnawing at the edges of Port’s forced calm. Their eyes were a bright, sickly green-- the same shade that had filled Port’s vision back on the battlefield planet. Port steeled himself, backing away as he watched turquoise-hued tendrils ooze out of the transformation seams and gaps crisscrossing the ‘bot’s frame.

He shoved down a wave of nausea. He had no time to dwell on the grotesque twisting of the frame as it stumbled toward him-- the only logical thing to do was to run. Hand on the wall for balance, Port limped down the hallway. He imagined, bitterly, that the sight was rather comical-- the sight of a heavy frame such as his, built for space travel and atmospheric pressure, tripping and struggling away from an organic-- a literal plant.

The punchline of the joke came when Port’s bad leg gave out from under him. Not expecting the failure, he fell. He crashed face first onto the floor. Port flipped himself over, only to see the twisted mech standing over him. Panic grabbed hold of his spark and squeezed. Port attempted to scoot back on the floor, to at least put up some semblance of a fight, but both legs had been snared by the vines jutting out of the mech’s armor. The mech bent down, deadened optics meeting Port’s, and their mouth lolled open in a twisted, grotesque grin. Port offlined his optic, ready to have his free will torn away by a plant once more--

That moment never came. Something whistled past Port’s audial, and something hit the floor with a loud thunk. Port switched his sight on, confusion clouding his processor as he stared at the mecha laying on the floor.

Scarlet Star stood across the hallway. Port stared at them incredulously.

“Port,” said Scarlet Star, intake twisted to one side. “What in the world are you doing here?”

“What in the world are you doing here?”

“Looking for you! You literally broke out of the examination room, and I didn’t know where you were!” Scarlet Star looked Port up and down, intake twisting in concern. “I had to go get something. Why the hell did you leave?”

“Like hell you were getting something,” Port snapped, scrambling into a more dignified position. “You doctors are all the same-- liars.”

“Port, I-- Primus, I wasn’t trying to be suspicious,” Scarlet Star stared at him with an exasperated expression. “Your friend has the same condition as several others in the hospital. I was getting my notes.” They waved a datapad in emphasis.

“First of all, he isn’t my friend. I don’t have friends. Second of all, you could have just told us that.”

Scarlet Star threw up their hands. “I knew you’d get weird about it! You’ve been weird about doctors ever since that situation during the war. I certainly didn’t expect you to punch through the fragging door.”

“I certainly didn’t expect you to lock me in a room without explanation,” Port’s gaze was hostile as he stared at Scarlet Star, daring them to argue. Finally, they sighed, shoulders slumping. On the ground, the infected doctor twitched, their plant’s tendrils curling and uncurling through transformation seams.

“Fine. Can we… continue this conversation later, once we get Coil restrained?” Scarlet Star bend down, injecting something else into the unconscious doctor’s neck cables. Hesitantly, optics fixated on the syringe, Port nodded.

“That would probably be prudent.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3


	4. Chapter 4

Brightspecs waited for exactly two nanokliks. His optic darted up the hall and toward the door, searching for movement, for a threat. His processor hummed with something that said “danger”, and every protocol in his frame told him to run away, as fast as he could.

Brightspecs, after a very brief argument with himself, gave in to those impulses. If what Port said was, indeed, true-- and Port had rarely been wrong in the short time that Brightspecs had known him-- he didn’t want to stick around to find out what those doctors wanted to do to him and the fragile plant squirming beneath his chassis.

“They’ll forgive me, right?” Brightspecs mumbled to himself, turning his glance to the hollow where the keypad once was. Searching the area, Brightspecs noted an opening to a ventilation system just to the right of the large door. Recalling what Port had said, he focused on finding some type of leverage that would help him get up there-- even without the use of dexterous hands. He had never wished more for Sunshift to be here.

Brightspecs jammed his pede between the doorway and the wall. Now firmly stuck, he used his claws to grab onto the seams of where the wall panels were melded together, and raised himself up. He pushed his way toward the vent. He winced as he tried to tug his other pede out of the tight space, and could feel the metal of his foot dent as he wrenched it out. 

The plant inside of him began to unfurl and begin to writhe against his innards. It rubbed up against the interior of his armor roughly enough that Brightspecs felt almost certain that there were lesions left behind. Along with the discomfort came a distinct, undeniable sense of unease. Not about to ignore his internal protocols, Brightspecs increased his effort, desperately tugging and pulling and occasionally scratching at the metal cover in front of him. Unnamed urgency coursed through his circuits as he pulled one last time--

The vent cover popped off. Startled, Brightspecs’ grip loosened on the panel and it crashed to the ground, sending a loud, hollow noise through the floor. Brightspecs froze, staring at the panel and then at the hallway. He felt almost certain that he heard pedesteps in the distance, coming toward him at a fast rate. Brightspecs pulled himself into the vent, wincing as his dented pedes were yanked out of the tight gap. He crawled further into the small space, claws grabbing onto the tiniest of gaps and scratches. Now he had to find his way through this maze hospital and get back to Port’s ship before he was taken apart and ultimately experimented on. 

A small fractal of light slipped through another vent cover, and Brightspecs was face to face with his own reflection in the chrome. He winced at the sight of his grotesque, flat helm, the mark of disapproval. He wasn’t as inconspicuous as he once was, and even the scratches in his paint would give him away. No normal hospital patient would have scuff marks from shoving their pedes into doors and crawling along ventilation systems.

Okay, fine. He would simply have to be stealthy about this. Brightspecs could be stealthy, definitely, no problem. Never mind that fact that he was painted bright green and sometimes convulsed from a sentient plant growing inside of him. 

Occasionally, he passed by another vent cover. Brightspecs peered through, finding more often than not that there were shapes on the other side, blocking some of the light that would have otherwise shone through the slotted entrance. He caught snippets of conversations, and at one point learned far more about an organic’s internal troubles than he ever wished to. 

Brightspecs gingerly crawled around a vent on the bottom of the passageway. In the midst of this process, he froze. Something whispered to him.

“Wrong metal shell. It hurts,” it gasped, in the same ethereal timbre that the Motherplant had used back on the battlefield planet. It was like a bot dipped their fingers into Brightspecs’ audial and was holding them there. He shuddered, attempting to shove it away. Who cared if the hospital had a plant problem? He had his own to deal with.

“It hurts. It hurts,” a plant cried out, simultaneous with the crying sound of a bot in pain, right below Brightspecs.

Brightspecs paused, processor conflicted. Every fiber of his being wanted to run, and he felt fully prepared to do so— screw stealth, at this point. He had to get away from the awful, scraping voices of the plants below.  
Even so, their pleas sounded far more desperate, far more pained than the Motherplant ever did. That voice was hungry—these voices were seeking asylum.

Brightspecs hesitated, listening intently for the sound of a doctor or nurse moving below. The lack of metal on metal satisfied him, and Brightspecs kicked at the vent cover. Without much resistance, it clattered to the floor below. He winced, but hopped out of the vent anyway. Brightspecs landed with practiced, light pedes, and he briefly congratulated himself on the retention of his previous skills. He would have thought that the empurata took that away, too.

The room was darkened, and any light that came through was dim and filtered through large, darkened windows. The pain-filled moaning of both plant and ‘bot filled Brightspecs’ hearing. He took a moment to steady himself before looking about.

He stood in the midst of a row of cots, each holding a mecha or organisms of a different size, each of the said individuals hooked up to life support apparatus. Nervously, Brightspecs peered over the edge of a cot, only to see bright turquoise tendrils weaving in and out of the inhabitant’s transformation seams and vents. He took a step backward as the plant whimpered. The mecha’s optics flickered online, projecting a pale green light on the ceiling above.

“Need sun, please,” implored the mecha’s plant.

“Doc,” groaned the mecha himself. His voice was half-way slurring, as if he had been drinking engex. “That you? You bring more painkillers?”

Brightspecs stumbled back, catching himself before he rammed into the cot behind him. Glancing at this one, he started when he saw that it wasn’t a Cybertronian on the cot, but a scaly organic, with the same vines jutting in and out of the gaps in their face. He winced.

This had been a horrible, horrible idea.

The sound of metal on metal pierced even the mental cacophony that filled Brightspecs’ processor. The plant in his chassis twitched in warning, and his helm swung in the same direction. Spotting a cot that was lower to the ground, he scurried over to it and quickly shoved his frame into the small space, attempting desperately to keep his body from quivering in fear. He shoved his claws between the panels on the floor to steady himself.

A door slid open, and, judging from the amount of pedes that Brightspecs could see from his spot, there were two individuals walking through.

“Aid said that he had never seen anything like this,” remarked a voice, gruff and raspy. “We’re trying to figure out a way to kill these… plants, but if we surgically remove them, the resulting shock could damage the patients’ internals, whether they be mechanical or organic.”

“It truly is a shame,” remarked a second voice, smooth and soft. “I find it difficult to believe that this… condition is so widespread, now. We’ve never had to close down an entire wing for a single sickness before.”

“New Delphi is a new facility,” the gruff voice snorted, their pedes starting and stopping. Brightspecs assumed that they were checking the life support machines—Sunshift had done as much back on the ship. “I suppose that we will have to have had our first plague at some point.” Something crackled. “Dammit. Emergency in the aquatic wing. Can you finish checking over everything here, while I take care of whatever the issue is upstairs?”

“Of course. Don’t slip on the floor, this time!” the soft voice snorted as the gruffer individual hurried back out of the room. For a moment, the room was silent.   
Brightspecs felt an uncomfortable twitching under his chassis, and he put one claw over his lurching spark. The whispering of the plants around him grew desperate, but for what reason, Brightspecs’ couldn’t pinpoint. It became incoherent, panicked crying.

The strange doctor (or nurse, Brightspecs couldn’t figure that out) walked to the cot right across from him. From that distance, he could only see the lower half of their body, but could still see a blurry reflection of their top half in the floor. He tightened his nervous grip.

“Doc,” whispered the mecha that Brightspecs had accidentally awoken. “It hurts. It hurts so much.”

“I’m not the doctor,” the employee soothed, “but I have something that will make it all go away. I promise.” She pulled something out of her subspace. Whatever the object was, it glowed a soft green in the low light, obscuring Brightspecs’ vision from much else. 

The employee’s voice was devoid of any true softness; instead, it remained cold, calculated, not quite on the cusp of cruel. Brightspecs felt frozen in place, only watching as the green light emanating from the doctor’s hand grew stronger, almost overwhelming in the darkness.

The plant’s voice, begging and crying against Brightspecs’ processor, grew garbled, devolving into snarls and demands. The patient’s vocalizer, almost simultaneously, crackled, sparked, and raised upward in tone as he screamed.

“You won’t feel any pain,” the employee assured the patient. Brightspecs saw the cot rock violently, until it finally tipped over. 

Oh, Primus. Brightspecs couldn’t keep his frame from quivering. His inner plant flinched as the patient fell to the ground on his hands and knees. The patient snarled. Something green dripped on the floor. His glossa lolled out of his mouth, and his optics were blankly ravenous as his helm slowly lifted from the floor. The plant’s tendrils had grown thicker, wrapping around his arms, his legs, around his helm.

“Good,” the doctor said, their voice satisfied. They knelt by the patient, and gently examined his mouth, his limbs, the tendrils jutting out of his body. “How do you feel, Landslide?”

The patient— Landslide— simply gurgled in response. He twisted away from the doctor’s grasp. Brightspecs wrung his claws together. He had to get out. If this was what the hospital was doing to those who were incapacitated, he did not want to see what they would do to someone in his position. His optic flicked to and fro, For now, he realized, all he could do was hide. And wait. Where the plant inside of Landslide could surely sense his presence.

He should have stayed put.

“Hungry. Sunlight. Give. Rip apart. Claim,” Landslide’s organic counterpart hissed, the sound like oil through Brightspecs’ audials. 

“I’ll have to report this success to Chargerender,” the doctor murmured. “But first— we can’t look suspicious, now, can we?”

Chargerender? The name sounded familiar. Had someone mentioned it back on Port’s ship? However he heard it first, Brightspecs felt an involuntary shiver travel up his spinal strut. And to avoid looking suspicious— what was that doctor planning to do?

The answer to that question was soon very, very clear. The employee walked around the room casually, and that same flash of green light would reflect off of the floor— and Brightspecs would hear another, garbled voice to add to the din in his processor. There were about ten of the voices now, all demanding light and freedom and, most disturbingly, sparks.

“I’ll leave you to it,” the doctor crooned, walking back toward the entrance to the treatment room. They paused, appearing to put the green object back in their subspace, before opening the door. “Help!” they shrieked, in a tone that did not in any way resemble the icy one that they possessed before. “The patients— they’ve gone mad!” Brightspecs heard pedesteps thumping away as they ran.

One of the patients snarled, stumbling toward the door, toward the only source of bright light.

“Feed. Now. Smell. Life. Light,” their plant hissed. 

Another loped toward the cot that Brightspecs hid underneath of, causing him to quail— before they flipped the cot over entirely and caused the patient to fall on the floor with a smack, causing them to whimper. Brightspecs scooted away as a group of the patients grabbed the small, scaley organic and tore it open. Their inner fluids, a metallic violet color, sprayed onto the floor, the remaining cots, other patients; the organic barely began to scream before the plant creatures tore them open, tearing away something small and fleshy and beating weakly. The vines already covering the organic simply covered the wound, and soon the previously black eyes of the individual were a bright, glowing green.

Brightspecs didn’t need to look to know that the other sane patients were being torn into, being consumed by plant material before standing up, wobbling on their pedes and murmuring about the sun. He had to get out.

Brightspecs risked a glance back up toward the ventilation system from where he came, and then at the wall. Steeling himself, he ran toward it, digging his claws desperately into the seams. With no other prey to attack, the creatures had turned their deadened optics, mechanical and organic, toward Brightspecs. He scrabbled at the wall, the plant around his spark lurching and twisting. A hand, covered in soft plant material, grabbed at Brightspecs’ ankle.

He couldn’t resist a shriek of disgust. His internal plant, apparently, seemed to agree with him— it reeled from the touch, angrily wrapping itself around every one of Brightspecs’ limbs, right underneath of his armor.

Desperately, Brightspecs reached for the square-shaped hole on the ceiling— uselessly, he knew. He’d never be able to reach that far. Stil, something inside of him implored him to reach, to try. Even as the monsters below dragged him down the wall, causing him to leave scores from where his claws were slipping, Brightspecs reached upward.

His armor parted, expanded. It swirled outward, as if he were transforming into his alt-mode. Brightspecs’ optic dilated as his frame shifted, stretching, flexing with the soft tissue he now saw was intertwined within his protoform. In almost a liquid way, Brightspecs stretched his arm upward— and grabbed onto the edges of the ventilation system. He sling-shotted himself into the air, through the hole and leaving the mass of hunger behind himself.

Brightspecs now sat in the ventilation system, frame quivering, processor spinning as he tried to comprehend what his body just did.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunshift makes some discoveries.

Sunshift, after walking for several more kliks, found herself in the middle of a bleached-white hallway. The chrome from before had given way to smoother, painted walls, although the metallic quality was still the same. She figured, judging by the sign, that this was another one of the “employees only” areas. Or, perhaps, it was the  _ same  _ area. She couldn’t tell— the transition from chrome to white had been seamless, and hadn’t noticed until it was complete.

She glanced about. The silence in this area wasn’t nearly as palpable, and she could hear the hushed voices of hospital staff from several kliks away. Sunshift tilted her helm, and walked toward them. If they questioned why she was there, she figured that she could lie and say that she got lost. Whether that would work or not, Sunshift wasn’t entirely certain— but it was worth a shot! If she made enough a ruckus, perhaps Port would come and get her, however exasperated he may be in that scenario.

Or, perhaps, he wouldn’t. Port had expressed his irritation with Sunshift more than once, and had stated his continuous desire to leave her someplace and never see her again. Sunshift’s wings drooped slightly as she turned her helm to glance at her now blurry reflection in the wall. Sunshift tip-toed toward another split in the hallway, which had widened significantly since she exited the purely chrome-colored corridors. She poked her helm around the corner, only to see two red-and-white ‘bots standing in front of a window. Withholding a squeak, she shrank back around the corner and watched the two carefully.

The two medical ‘bots seemed preoccupied by something that the shorter was holding. They muttered to each other. Never one to deny the curiosity that flooded being at this sight, Sunshift strained her audials to listen.

“…replicate what Vector Sigma did in miniature. Trying to make new life, new  _ sparks _ ,” whispered the taller one.

“She’s a genius, but a fool one at that. Keeps trying to convince Aid to give her doctors to employ. He’ll never let any of us go, though,” the smaller muttered.

It’s an opportunity—she’s done a lot for the medical field as a whole. Rather work for her than for grumpy ‘ol Aid, anyhow.”

“Yeah. Making new, mecha-made life? Far more interesting than performing check-ups on squishy organics and hopeless plague victims.”

The two began to walk away, but Sunshift caught one more word before they moved out of her audial sensors’ range.

“…Chargerender…”

Sunshift’s entire frame stiffened, and the pulse of her spark quickened as it spun. She remembered the hours that she spent bending over cadavers, picking apart wiring and energon lines, t-cogs and spark chambers. She remembered the soft, low voice of her mentor through the intercom, echoing through the long, silent hallways. Sunshift remembered, too, the empty optics of the other doctors in the facility, and the fog that would creep over her processor from time to time.

She tried to force her sparkbeat to calm, her venting to steady. Chargerender wasn’t  _ here— _ she couldn’t take Sunshift away and didn’t even know that she was here.

Behind her mouthplate, an old wound twinged. Sunshift pushed the pain aside, and padded into the hall where the two medical builds had previously been. Glancing at the door, she realized that it was some kind of surgical chamber, with a window peering inside. Sunshift’s processor immediately pushed away the stale taste of fear and replaced it with something fresher, with a tang-- curiosity.

Sunshift swiveled her gaze up and down the hall. Now that she knew that Chargerender had contact with this place, her sensors practically buzzed with unease. If the hospital staff caught her, they wouldn’t only hurt Brightspecs, but would turn her in as well-- she felt certain of that. The very notion of returning to that facility, after escaping so narrowly, was sobering. She rubbed her mouthplate over the area that hurt.

Despite her misgivings, it evidently wasn’t enough to stop herself from walking toward the door. To her astonishment, it simply slid open without a care. She didn’t even need to enter a code to get inside.

Disappointingly enough, the room was empty, the area where a stretcher would be barren. Sunshift pouted beneath her mouthplate, but padded inside anyway. The door shut behind her.

The equipment in here was far sleeker than anything that Sunshift had ever seen. Everything was shiny and clean and sanitized. The smell of cleaner practically made Sunshift’s olfactory sensors burn-- how utterly different this was from Chargerender’s rust-ridden tools! She gently picked a scalpel off of an equally shiny table, marveling at how sharp it was. The blades at Chargerender’s were always dull, and it always took so much pressure to cut through wires. After a dissection or surgical procedure, the joints in Sunshift’s hands always ached. Blades like this must be so easy to cut with! And the welder…! Sunshift hopped over to the beautiful, shiny apparatus and turned it over in her hands. It felt smooth, with no rust to be had anywhere on its surface.

Sunshift’s gaze swept over the rest of the clean, shiny room. On the walls were several screens, on which Sunshift assumed would be diagrams that the surgeons used for reference. At Chargrender’s, all Sunshift had was a small, poor-quality datapad to use while she worked. More often than not, the datapad in question would become saturated with energon and, in the end, completely useless. Curiosity getting the better of her, Sunshift switched on one of the screens on the wall. The display flickered to life, showing the inside of some poor mecha’s body-- the plant material twining around their innards looked painful. 

Sunshift did a double-take. For a moment, her frame froze in panic, thinking that Brightspecs had been taken-- however, after a moment, Sunshift realized that the paint color was different, as was the armor structure. She peered closer at the image, optics narrowing.

Was there someone else with the same problem as Brightspecs? The ‘bot in the picture was not dead-- she could tell that from the brightness of their paint color and the obvious flow of their energon lines. Sunshift pressed a button on the screen that flipped to the next image-- the design of the device was very similar to that of screen in the medbay on the ship, although this one looked sleeker and more sophisticated. What Sunshift saw in the next photo was another shot of a ‘bot’s innards, with plants jabbing in and out of their organs. She shuddered slightly when she noticed how the tendrils seemed to block in the t-cog, preventing it from turning. Transforming must have been agony for this mecha.

Sunshift flipped through a series of pictures on the display, all showing a variety of patients with the same condition. Organic, mechanical-- it didn’t matter. All had plants twisting their organs around, seeming to suffocate and squeeze. 

The sight fascinated Sunshift just as much as it turned her tanks upside down. The plant condition seemed to be borderline crippling, with how it invaded both energon lines and muscle tissue(though Sunshift knew next to nothing about the latter). If it really strangled the innards of a victim so, Brightspecs shouldn’t be able to even move.

What was the difference? The conditions were the same, but the reactions between the subjects were incomparable. And, now that Sunshift thought about it, the dead victims on the battlefield planet were completely overtaken by the plants, crying out in hunger and mindlessly grasping for life. 

Perhaps this was less like a kind of virus and more like a  _ parasite _ .


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scarlet Star recounts.

“Many decacycles ago-- I can’t even remember how many-- we had an influx of patients complaining about occasional limb paralysis, and pain of their internals. We tested each one for any of the possible illnesses that we had on file, and no matter what we did the affected came up clean after the tests. Then, as time went by, they began to get these greenish, plantlike growths protruding from transformation seams, from pores, from mouths and intakes. The patients claimed that they could feel the growths moving about inside of them, that they were being spoken to constantly.

“The affected are not able to move their limbs, and are barely able to speak. They begin to get memory lapses, and their fuel intake, whether the affected is organic or mechanical, increases exponentially. That is, until the final stage of the disease, where the plant seemingly takes over the patient’s body entirely. They act with unprovoked aggression, and attempt to bite and scratch at any who come near. We have had to restrain those who have succumbed to this, like Coil, here.” Scarlet Star, having finished clipping the restraints back around the other medical build’s limbs, turned back toward Port, who sat against the wall in a daze. Warily, Port’s good optic fixated on the infected patient before him.

“This is just like the creatures on the planet where we crashed,” Port rubbed the top of his nasal ridge, processor beginning to ache with the memory of the plant wiggling underneath of his armor and controlling his every movement.

“Yeah. I figured that they were related when your nursebot-- Sunshift, was it?--told me about your… escapades. When I scanned the empurata, though, it just confirmed my suspicions, though I’m not sure how he’s still lucid.”

“I didn’t think about it too much. He’s a pre-war model; who knows what slag the Senate put his frame through?” Port shook his helm, remembering reports about the sinister Institutes, both old and new.

Scarlet Star’s intake quirked downward. “That’s the thing, though; we have an almost-complete record of every experiment that was performed at the Institutes and by the Senate, although there are, admittedly, some holes. There was never anything that dealt with organics or biological weapons, especially not of this caliber. I was hoping to study the empurata’s frame, and hopefully find some way to help the patients’ minds, if not their bodies as well.”

Port looked down at his hands, where dents and scratches and chipped paint betrayed his lack of care for so many vorns. He remembered how he purged out the plant in his system, thanks to Sunshift’s noxious concoction-- he could still taste its bitterness. He glanced back up at Scarlet Star. “There was a plant that took over my systems back on the battlefield planet. Sunshift was able to get it out of my systems,” he said-- Port was unwilling to help Scarlet Star directly, but if Port could leave quicker, well, so be it, then. He told himself that it made no difference whether the hospital survived or not. “She made some kind of engex-based swill and induced a purge strong enough to throw the root of it out.”

Scarlet Star’s optics brightened. “Do you… know what she used? The measurements? Proportions?”

“You’ll have to ask her about that. She’s currently lost in your damned maze of a hospital, though,” Port’s optics narrowed. “I don’t know anything about what she used, and I sure as hell don’t want to know,  _ nurse _ .”

“You say that as though it were a bad thing, Port,” Scarlet Star said softly.

“It may as well be the worst thing.”

A buzzing sound emitted from somewhere. Port barely kept his solar panels from snapping open in shock, and Scarlet Star stiffened in turn. They reached toward their shoulder plate, where a piece of metal in the shape of a red cross sat. They frowned, pressing down on it. “Hello? What’s the problem? Maverick, if this is you playing with the emergency channel again--”

“They got out!” someone on the other end shrieked, causing the communicator to crackle with interference. “In the T-Wing. Seventeen of the plague patients-- they’ve escaped!” 

Port and Scarlet Star exchanged grim glances. “I’ll be right there,” Scarlet Star said, and switched their communicator off.

“What exactly are you going to  _ do _ about it?” Port demanded.

Scarlet Star’s intake twisted. “Whatever I can, I suppose. And hope that I don’t get plants taking root in my systems.”

“We,” Port muttered under his breath.

Scarlet Star glanced at him, surprised evident in their optics. “What?”

“We. Our. I’m going too, idiot. I’m not going to sit here and rust.” The words seemed to rush out of Port’s intake before he could stop them-- because he  _ didn’t  _ care. He didn’t. This ‘bot that he knew for so long wasn’t anything to Port. 

Despite all that, despite his conviction, he couldn’t stop his spark from straining with determination as Star smiled warmly. “Never thought I’d see the day, Port.”

Port snorted. “Don’t get too smug about it. We have to find Sunshift before she inevitably gets killed by a pack of mindless plant proxies.”

“Aye, captain,” Scarlet Star grinned.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brightspecs meets someone new.

The voices of every plant below seemed to combine into one, horrific amalgamation of hunger and mindless need. Brightspecs shuddered, clinging to the air vent as if that would save him from discovery-- by either the hospital itself or the infected organisms below. As he crawled through the tight space, he listened to the panicked staff jabbering into their communicators and to each other. Occasionally, there would be a scream, piercing even the deafening commotion. Brightspecs winced when that happened.

He paused as he passed by a grate that peered into the hallway below. Curiosity getting the better of him, Brightspecs stopped and watched the small patch of floor. Fluid of a myriad of colors painted its surface. His claws clenched the edges of the ventilation passage, denting the metal under his distress. Something was here.

_ “Sun. Where sun? Hungry. So hungry. Eat. Sow. Take root.” _

The voice sounded close; too close for Brightspecs’ comfort. It crawled on the inside of his audials and made him shudder, made his claws shake. Not again. He couldn’t face another danger, another possibility that the small portion of his body that still belonged to him would be siphoned away.

Another yell. A doctor, cornered and attempting to defend themself; all the medical knowledge that they possessed wouldn’t help them in the face of the endless, bottomless hunger of the voices. Brightspecs fully intended to stay right in this spot, where the monsters couldn’t reach him. Ashamed, he bunched his frame into a ball as much as he could, shivering at the growls and whispers that echoed around him. He  _ wanted _ to help, he truly did-- but Brightspecs couldn’t bring himself to move, to force himself out of his hiding place and put himself in harm’s way for a stranger; especially to the doctors that Port said would have certainly taken him apart.

Despite that, Brightspecs remembered Sunshift’s bright optics, the first thing he saw when he had awaken back on the ship. He recalled her willingness to save him, her freely-given friendship. Brightspecs remembered, and his limbs moved without his permission. He kicked away the ventilation cover and landed right in the midst of the puddle on the floor; he groaned in disgust at the wetness beneath his pedes despite himself.

Before Brightspecs was a slavering construction bot, cornering a smaller medical build. Vines jutted every which way off of the construction build, grotesquely reminding Brightspecs what could have been. The infected raised their hand, ready to bash in the medical build’s helm.

Mustering up the pressure building under his chassis, Brightspecs screamed at the planet.  _ “Stop.” _

__ The infected mecha slowly turned to look at Brightspecs, its optics dull and green and borderline lifeless. Brightspecs’ optic contracted with terror as he stared at it, his inner determination wavering rather quickly. He flinched, waiting for the inevitable blow.

...Which never came. Brightspecs steadied himself, glancing back up at the infected. It stared back, intentions blank rather than specifically hostile. It  _ listened _ . Perhaps the plants listened better when they dwelled within living beings rather than dead ones…?

_ “Sit,” _ Brightspecs said experimentally. The giant construction bot, plants jutting out of its transformation seams and joints, huge and imposing, slammed onto the ground on its backside. It continued to stare at Brightspecs with those blank optics.

The employee, still clinging onto the wall, stared at Brightspecs, her intake wide open in shock. “How… how did you…”

“Better not to ask,” Brightspecs tore his gaze away from the construction bot. “...Are you okay?” As he turned to face the cornered doctor, he slowly realized that she sounded familiar. 

“Okay as I  _ can _ be. Th-thank you.” the shake in the employee’s voice, the more Brightspecs listened to it, felt only half-genuine. Something false ran through her countenance, and Brightspecs didn’t like it. Not at all. 

“You’re… you’re welcome,” Brightspecs said, glancing at the construction bot. It stared right back at Brightspecs, blank and  _ hungry _ . “I should… probably get going?”

“Wait, you can’t go!” the doctor’s optics widened. “It’s too dangerous to be alone right now, even with your—” her gaze flicked from Brightspecs to the infected patient and back. “--talents.”

“Yeah, but I have some friends, and they’re probably waiting for me, and…” 

The mecha leaned in closer toward Brightspecs, optics scrutinizing and cold. “How did you get out?” she hissed. Brightspecs’ frame began to shake in that pathetic way of his.

“Get out…?”

“Uh, yeah? Get out of the facility? Out of Chargerender’s care?” her optics narrowed. “The lucid ones are kept tied down.” Her hand grabbed Brightspecs’ upper arm. His plating prickled uncomfortably at her touch, and he tried to pull away. Her grip remained firm. “She gets mad when people leave.”

“Please let go,” Brightspecs whimpered.

“I think not. You’re too valuable as you are for me to leave here.” The doctor took the same crystal that Brightspecs saw before out of her subspace. He squirmed, the very sight of it making the plant inside of him writhe in pain and discomfort.

“Please leave me alone. I’m not a threat, I promise, I promise…” Brightspecs flinched away as the doctor moved her hand to his shoulder-wheel, holding him in place. She moved the crystal closer toward him, a light burgeoning in its center. Brightspecs quivered, unable to move as he stared at the green-clear depths. The pain and discomfort drained away, becoming but distant memories. Desperate, Brightspecs pictured Port and Sunshift-- would they leave without him? “No, please don’t. Don’t. I don’t want to.  _ Leave me alone,  _ please,  _ please _ , I don’t  _ want to listen _ I don’t want to  _ I don’t want to  _ I don’t want to….” His voice gurgled, slipping into plant-speak as the crystal grew brighter. Gradually, Brightspecs’ vision faded to green, and was faintly aware of a primal anger that surged from his core.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunshift has an idea.

Sunshift hurried through the corridors, clutching her pilfered datapad to her cockpit. A sense of urgency, heightened by the overheard conversation about Chargrerender fueled her legs as she went. Her processor spun, wondering about the connection; it simply couldn’t be coincidence that Chargerender was trying to recruit others, all while being the cold and calculating ‘bot that she was. Sunshift’s vision blurred as she pictured Chargerender’s emotionless optics, observing Sunshift’s cadaver examinations from a window high above. The very memory made Sunshift’s hands begin to shake slightly. In her haste, Sunshift clipped her wounded wing on the wall while rounding a corner. She barely managed to keep herself from crying out, as the tender metal around her wound sent pain throbbing through her circuits. Briefly, she stopped, attempting to calm herself by cycling air through her vents slowly, steadily. Sunshift tightened her hold on the datapad in her hands, a lifeline in her quickly spiraling panic. She had to find Port and Brightspecs, and quickly, to talk about this “plague” and Chargerender and how bad of an idea this was…

Sunshift’s plating quivered. They wouldn’t have left her, right? Even in all of his grumpy glory, Port wouldn’t have just abandoned her. Sunshift had promised him too many shanix for him to quit now. And Brightspecs? He was Sunshift’s  _ friend. _ He liked her, didn’t he? He laughed at some of her jokes, after all, and patiently answered the questions that she had. Sunshift’s intake twisted. Or perhaps she asked  _ too many _ questions? Maybe she made Port and Brightspecs mad and they just left her here in this place that reminded her of Chargerender and was way too close for comfort…

A large, firm hand placed itself on Sunshift’s shoulder plate. She startled, whipping around to face the intruder. Instead of a threat, she was face-to-face with Port’s perpetually angry face, something that Sunshift had never been so happy to see. Her face split into a grin, and she dropped the datapad onto the floor in exchange for tackling Port with a hug.

“Port! You didn’t leave! I totally didn’t think you would, but you’re always so annoyed by me and I thought I made you and Brightspecs mad enough that you would both just  _ leave _ me here and I missed your grumpy face!” Sunshift poked Port on his nasal ridge. His face twisted into a scowl, though if Sunshift wasn’t mistaken it seemed to be forced.

“I didn’t leave,” he grunted, “because you’re paying me.” Port paused. He patted Sunshift’s back hesitantly. “Also. You didn’t make anyone mad, but you  _ will  _ make me mad if you don’t get off.”

“Okay!” Sunshift released her grip on Port. She plucked the abandoned datapad from the floor, and glanced back at Port— he didn’t come alone. Scarlet Star stood behind him, their optics amused as they watched the scene. Sunshift’s wings shot upward in alarm, aching in their haste. “Port! Look out behind you!”

Port glanced back at Scarlet Star. “Sunshift, they’re not a threat. I was,” he paused, “mistaken in their intentions.” Port sighed heavily, rubbing his cheek with one hand.

Scarlet Star moved to stand beside Port, their own faceplates set in a determined way. Their optics met Sunshift’s. “Port told me that you were able to cure him of this… plant disease?”

“Well, actually,” Sunshift corrected them, “it’s a parasite, not a disease! The plant feeds off of the host’s energon, or other life giving fluids through the stomach or tank, depending on whether the host itself is organic or mechanical.” Sunshift switched the datapad on, and her homemade diagram flickered into view. It showed a cybertronian and an organic, furry species, both with smiley faces. She pointed toward the abdomens of each. “The plant takes root here! That’s why I was able to get Port to purge it all out. I think it gets there if the host ingests its spores or something, but I haven’t quite figured that out yet.” She pulled the root from Port’s tanks out of her subspace, which had become wrinkled from gradual drying out. She placed it into Scarlet Star’s hands as if she were bestowing a treasure upon them.

Scarlet Star’s intake twisted as they stared at the thing. “Ah. Thanks, Sunshift.” They shoved it into their own subspace, shuddering in disgust. “But there is one problem; we’ve been trying to induce purges in our patients-- organic and mechanical both—for a while now. Nothing except fuel and energon or organic fluid ever comes out.”

“Maybe the root is in a different place in these patients,” Sunshift pondered out loud. “Brightspecs’ plant is located in his spark; I saw it when we first found him. The root systems of the patients’ plants seem to run throughout their bodies. See?” she pointed at her makeshift diagrams. “They’ve attached differently; it’s more of a symbiotic relationship than a solely parasitic one! Brightspecs heals a lot faster than your average ‘bot, and I think we owe that to our turquoise friend inside of him. Therefore, this is a more advanced species, working  _ with  _ its host rather than just sucking up energy forever! I think something is purposefully devolving the plants in our feral patients because they’re growling and stuff and Specs doesn’t do that, so it  _ has  _ to be some kind of outside influence that is affecting the plant growth!” Sunshift beamed, and gave an exaggerated bow as Scarlet Star and Port stared at her; Star with fascination, Port with a shocked awe.

Port shook himself. “Sunshift, we have seventeen of these patients running loose. How are you proposing that we fix this if it’s some kind of ‘outside influence’?”

“Concentrated electromagnetic pulses affect how the plants function, which is why it hurt Brightspecs so much when Star scanned him and he fell to the ground crying out in pain! So  _ obviously _ this is an electromagnetic pulse so we have to find it by tracking any moving pulses through the hallways!” Sunshift didn’t mention the part where she suspected that it was some kind of employee from Chargerender’s—they ran experiments on EM Pulses all the time in one of the other departments. Sunshift had never been allowed inside of those chambers.

Scarlet Star frowned thoughtfully. “You know,” they said. “That might just work.”

“This is lunacy,” Port muttered. “How are you going to track this  _ one EM signal _ ? This hospital is huge.”

“Yes, but the scanners in each of the rooms are static,” Scarlet Star said. “Attached to the wall, or otherwise unable to be removed from the room.”

“They’re probably on the move!” Sunshift said. “I mean, I would be, if I made a bunch of mindless plant monsters. We can track their EM signals, right? Right, Port? Can’t you build something like that?” Her wings raised hopefully.

Port stared at her for one long moment. His intake twisted, and he looked away, jaw plate set. “Fine. Star, you have any equipment that I can gut?”

“Well, not  _ legally _ , but I know of a few things that we could possibly salvage.”


	9. Chapter 9

Brightspecs struggled to retain conscious thought through the green haze. His frame moved on its own, stalking and twitching after the bulky medic. Her optics occasionally flicked back toward him, and they were filled with something like fear. Brightspecs’ vocalizer spit out incoherent words, garbled to the point that his own audials couldn’t register what they said. He was  _ hungry _ \-- he knew that much. He was _angry_.   


The mecha in front of him said something. Brightspecs strained to hear it through the static filling his senses. Nonetheless, his frame obeyed, and he jammed his claws into the door in front of him. The plant in his frame surged and pulsed, and Brightspecs ripped the door away from the wall. The doctor walked inside. Brightspecs had no choice but to follow.

“First Aid,” the doctor said, triumphant in their tone. Behind a wide, imposing desk sat an unamused-looking medical build, whose visor glinted with annoyance. “Chargerender sends her regards, and a request for you to comply to her demands.”

“This ‘request’ sounds more like a threat,” First Aid replied. He stood up, frame heavy and imposing despite his shorter stature. Brightspecs felt the hold on his insides waver as First Aid leaned forward, visor’s gaze sharpening. “And I don’t take kindly to threats, especially when they concern my staff and my patients. If this is Chargerender’s game, then I’m not going to play.”

“O-oh yeah?” the mecha seized control on Brightspecs’ body once again, and he had no choice but to step in front of her, claws brandished toward First Aid. Her voice quivered. “I think you’ll change your opinion once this guy claws your visor off.”

“You can stop the tough act, kid.”

“I am not a ‘kid’. I am a fully grown individual that is fully capable of  _ killing _ you! And I  _ will, _ if you don’t contact Chargerender  _ right now _ and transfer fifty percent of your employees’ contracts to her!”

“That’s an unreasonable request. Both you and I know that.”

“Shut  _ up!”  _ the mecha snarled. In time with her will, Brightspecs lunged at him, a gurgling snarl ripping itself from his vocalizer. He leaped at First Aid, limbs stretching out unnaturally and plant keening in hunger. “Just do what I say!”

Just as suddenly, Brightspecs was on the floor, faintly aware of the pede holding him on the ground and First Aid standing over him. His visor, however, was not facing Brightspecs, but the employee. “Cadaver, is it? Listen. You’re going to stop tampering with the care of my patients, and you are going to stop threatening the good of this hospital.”

“Make me, you rustbucket!” Cadaver’s control tightened, and Brightspecs recoiled as his insides constricted. He shoved First Aid’s pede away, overcoming the other’s significant weight with a jerk of his plant’s tendrils. He knocked him over, and shoved him toward the wall. Seemingly taken aback, First Aid stumbled. Brightspecs dropped to all fours, his limbs coiling beneath him with a wiry strength that he didn’t have. He pounced, claws extended. He knocked First Aid to the ground and began to claw at his frame, leaving deep scores in metal and making energon seep from his armor. First Aid shouted, and tried to shove Brightspecs off of him— but to no avail. He was stuck fast.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” First Aid hissed as he tried to wrestle Brightspecs away. Brightspecs couldn’t answer— his vocalizer was held fast by Cadaver’s control. A feral gurgle emerged from it instead of speech. He cracked First Aid’s visor with a swipe of his claws. Cadaver watched from afar. Brightspecs could feel her hold on him, felt it suppress his will. It felt familiar; it felt familiar to viciously attack a ‘bot like this. No specific image came to mind— this was more like a feeling, an inner conviction and the terrifying implication that this was what Brightspecs was  _ supposed  _ to do.

His thoughts raced, spinning around and around with nowhere to go and no way to implement them. He wanted to stop this. He wasn’t a fighter. Nonetheless, he was ripping into First Aid’s plating like it was something that he had always done.

Brightspecs was faintly aware of a shout, and someone pulled him off of First Aid. He recognized Port’s violet plating— Port! He hadn’t left Brightspecs here. He wanted to shout for joy, but instead struggled and snarled.

“Specs?” Sunshift peered at him closely, her optics sweetly concerned. She hadn’t left either. She reached a hand toward him. “Specs, what’s gotten into you?” 

Brightspecs screamed, slashing his claws at Sunshift’s face. He scored deep marks into her faceplate. She cried out. She backed away from him, hurt crossing her faceplates. It hurt Brightspecs too, to look at that expression— but all he did was growl. 

Behind, Brightspecs felt a flash of recognition emanating from Cadaver’s end of their connection, making her control waver. Another ‘bot— he faintly recognized them as Scarlet Star— knelt down toward First Aid. They examined his wounds.

“Get… her...” First Aid croaked.

In a flash, Cadaver snapped out of her stupor and fled from the room. Brightspecs struggled in Port’s tight grasp. He jerked his body from side to side. He violently jostled himself out of Port’s hands. He ran after Cadaver, her will demanding that he follow. 

Faintly, Brightspecs heard Sunshift cry out his name. Though his processor and his spark were pulled back, his body kept charging forward, pulled by the pulse emanating from the device in Cadaver’s hands.

“Come on, come on,” Cadaver muttered to herself. Brightspecs could feel fear and irritation running through her circuits almost as easily as he could feel his own emotions. They ran through corridor after corridor, eventually stopping at what appeared to be a cargo bay. Cadaver punched a code into the door and it slid open. Brightspecs was compelled to follow her inside.

The interior of the cargo bay was devoid of any other people, mechanical and organic alike. Brightspecs stood by the door, a sentinel ordered to stand stiffly and watch if anyone came near. His limbs shook from exertion, held up only by the plant curling in and out of his joints. He watched Cadaver yank a tarp off of a cruiser designed for small cargo. She opened the doors to reveal the bright sun outside. It was golden, this light, and the tendrils inside of Brightspecs curled happily.

Cadaver opened the ship’s ramp just before the door leading into the hospital was burst open, punched into oblivion by Port’s relentless fists. Behind it stood Port and Sunshift, the latter reaching toward Brightspecs with desperate hands.

“Specs!” Sunshift urged. “Come back! Please?” Her mouthplate was scored with deep claw marks. Energon oozed from a lesion above her left optic. Brightspecs’ spark pulsed with a sickened feeling— the knowledge that  _ he  _ had done that. The desperation in Sunshift’s voice never ceased as she took a step closer to Brightspecs. “You’re not like this, you’re not mean and vicious and awful and please come back—”

A snarl dragged itself from Brightspecs’ unwilling vocalizer as he slapped her hand away. He ran toward Cadaver, dodging Port’s grasp as the two made a beeline for the cruiser.

“Stop!” Port’s voice was loud, commanding as he limped toward them. Neither he nor Sunshift were fast enough as the ship started up at an unnaturally quick pace; there had to be someone inside of it, waiting for this escape.

“Specs!” Sunshift begged again as she ran after Brightspecs. She grabbed his pede as the ship’s ramp began to close, leaving him on the edge. He grasped it tightly, never letting go even as the ship began to rise. He roughly jerked his pede up and down, Sunshift’s grip loosening. She fell onto the floor with a clang, pushed into the ship by the ramp. Her helm tilted toward Brightspecs. Her optics were wide. Her wings shook as she stared at him, the space around them lit only by the glow of each of their optics.

The ship’s engine roared. The room shook. Brightspecs stood steadily as Sunshift was pressed flat into the floor. Nonetheless, her gaze never left him, never stopped its silent pleading as the ship rose off of the ground.

Light. A door slid open, illumination flooding the tiny room. Cadaver stood in the doorway, posture straight. Her optics gave away nothing. Silently, Brightspecs was pulled to her side. He complied.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Cadaver told Sunshift.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An overdue conversation.

Port watched. He watched the ship take off, unable to do a thing as Sunshift disappeared inside of it. He stood there, frame quivering, as his companions were taken. He should have been able to say “good riddance”; but he couldn’t even bring himself to think. Far away, he heard a strangled yelling. It was his own voice.

He was led down a succession of hallways. He reported his experiences to First Aid for the official record and didn’t remember a single thing he said. People asked Port question after question, and with a fuzzy processor he answered. All the while, his hands shook.

Someone pulled him to the side. Scarlet Star steadied Port, taking the majority of the strain off his twisted leg. It had begun to ache.

“C’mon, I’ll get you out of the fray,” they muttered to him.

“Shut up,” Port rumbled, feebly pushing their hands away from him. “Let go of me.”

“I’m going to sit you down.” Scarlet Star stopped at a bench. Port lunged, trying to limp away, but his good leg gave way under his weight. He fell on the floor and stared at it for a moment. Scarlet Star pulled him up by the arm. “Port. Stop being an idiot. You can’t let yourself fall apart before you chase after them.”

“What makes you think,” Port said, “that I’m going to chase after them at all?”

Scarlet Star pulled him onto a seat and proceeded to sit next to Port. Their hand rested on his back. “Because you’re tired of being alone,” they said simply. “I’m tired of  _ seeing  _ you be alone.”

“Maybe I like being alone.”

“You can say that, and it may be true. No creature in the universe can make it alone forever, though. That’s a fact. Which is why I’m going with you to find your friends.”

“They aren’t my—”

“Friends, companions, whatever they are.” Scarlet Star cut him off, gaze steely. “I’m not going to let you give up on life again after a loss. Life is full of losses. That doesn’t mean you should wallow in them.”

“I feel like this isn’t just about Brightspecs and Sunshift.” Port gripped the bench under him tightly. It dented beneath his grasp. “And I don’t appreciate you bringing this up. You  _ could _ have brought it up millennia ago.”

“I  _ tried  _ to bring it up, but you literally threatened to kill me,” they said dryly.

“I wouldn’t have  _ actually _ killed you,” Port muttered.

“I sure as hell didn’t know that. You’re fragging huge, and could probably crush my helm between your hands. Plus, you were kind of unstable.”

Images of explosions, of losing control, of crashing ships crossed Port’s vision. His mouth twisted to the side at the memory of his rage, his grasping for death, for punishment. His fingers brushed the plating next to his ruined optic. “I think that’s mildly putting it.”

Silence loomed between them for a few kliks, filled with unsaid words and thoughts. Without Sunshift’s chatter and Brightspecs’ presence to fill it, Port’s processor began turning toward unpleasant truths, those that drove him to defect all those years ago. Unbidden, he began to think about the shattered insignia hidden within his ship. He remembered the feeling of another’s constant companionship—of Starboard.

Oh, Starboard. That curious, bright-sparked minibot that had made Port’s existence brighter, that made even the void of space seem interesting. The person that he loved the most, the only one that he needed as they traversed the emptiness of the universe. Starboard’s vibrance had outshone the very stars that Port studied and mapped, but his gentle ways always prodded Port in the right direction.

He had been like Sunshift and Brightspecs all at the same time.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t save Starboard,” Scarlet Star’s voice gently broke through Port’s stupor. “I’ve been sorry for millennia. There was nothing that I didn’t try, nothing that we could have done.” They hesitated. “Getting High Command to even give him a memorial was like pulling scraplets off a newlyforged, but I did it. It wasn’t anything special. But for what it’s worth I think he would have liked it.”

“I don’t care about a memorial,” Port said, his senses still far, far away. “I care about  _ him _ .”

“Yeah. Me too. He was a friend.” Star’s hands clasped together. Port could vaguely feel their vents shuddering. “Listen. Port. I know I couldn’t do anything for Starboard. I know that you hate me for it. But please, let me help you find your companions. So I can do _something_ this time. ”

Port glanced at Scarlet Star, at their earnest gaze. Something within him broke. “Yeah. Okay.”


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confrontation.

Sunshift sat in a locked room, something all too familiar to her. This time, instead of her room at the lab, it was a barren storage room, crusted with rust along its edges and half-filled with cleaning supplies. She sat on a crate in front of the door, waiting for someone to let her out.

Her mind swirled with anxiety. Brightspecs hadn’t recognized her  _ at all _ , and had even scratched her, like some kind of savage techno-organic  _ beast _ that liked to devour flightframes for fun and not even sustenance. Sunshift’s wings drooped as she recalled the horrible, emotionless optics of that other ‘bot, the one named Cadaver that so shamelessly took Brightspecs’ self-control away from him. Despite her horribleness, Sunshift couldn’t help but feel that Cadaver looked familiar. She certainly worked for Chargerender—perhaps Sunshift knew her from there?

It wasn’t Cadaver’s plating that looked familiar, but her mannerisms, her vocalizations. Sunshift wondered if her faulty memory was responsible for that. The patchy web of faces and words threading through the time before Chargerender often made her have déjà vu, but never anything this solid. Perhaps there was something to this—perhaps Sunshift  _ had  _ known Cadaver at some point. She shuddered, attempting to push the notion away and failing. What else could she think about if not her lack of a past, of waking up in front of Chargerender with no recollection of her own designation?

The storage room door opened, revealing Cadaver’s grumpy face. It was almost like Port’s grumpy face, but genuinely mean. Sunshift wondered why she would ever know someone so awful.

Then again, she also knew  _ Chargerender. _ It didn’t get more horrible than that.

“How the hell are you here?” Cadaver demanded, looming over Sunshift despite the fact that she was much shorter. “You’re not supposed to be here. You  _ can’t _ be here.”

“You already said that. Could you please tell me why? Other than the fact that I broke my ‘contract’ with Chargerender and escaped with a bunch of definitely-not-stolen files.” Sunshift kicked her legs against the crate she was sitting on. It made a pleasantly annoying noise. Judging by Cadaver’s twitching optic, the desired effect was taking place. “Also, I can go wherever I want because I have free will!”

“Uh, because you’ve been terminated for over two decacycles?” She crossed her arms. “I know. I saw it. I saw you try to escape and I saw them shoot you.”

Sunshift squinted at Cadaver, mouth twisted to the side. “Did they mess with your memory too? ‘Cause I’m not dead, or at least I don’t think so. Being dead seems like something that you’d know about.”

“What are you talking about? My memory is not flawed. You’re the one that should be dead, Sunshore.”

Sunshift giggled. “That’s not my name! Your processor really  _ is  _ scrambled. Well, I would have said that, even if you didn’t get my name wrong, because you’re awful and made my friend attack people."

Cadaver seemed to become more and more agitated. “No. That  _ is  _ your name. You’re the one whose processor is scrambled, clearly. I’m sure that being dead would do that.” Sunshift made a face at her. “And don’t do  _ that _ ! It’s disrespectful and undermines my  _ authority _ .”

“What authority? The position that Chargerender gave you even though she doesn’t trust anyone except really mean ‘bots that make your life miserable and don’t give you energon and lock you in rooms?”

“Shut  _ up!  _ You listen to me. I don’t care if you’re dead or not. We’re on the way to Chargerender’s facility, and she’s going to do whatever she wants with you, and I’m never going to see you again. Capiche?”

“That’s a human phrase. Are you a war veteran? No, don’t answer that. You don’t have the scars for that and you’re too cocky to be old, so were you forged on Earth?” Sunshift forced herself to talk, to shove away the cold fear that dug its fingers into every one of her transformation seams at the very thought of Chargerender’s disappointed optics. Never openly aggressive, always disappointed—being angry was too much of a commitment for her. “You’re from Cybertron, then? Or Luna-1? I don’t know where I am from myself—”

“Shut.  _ Up! _ ” A clang rang out through the room, and then a clatter. Cadaver stood there, her hand still raised. She seemed frozen in place.

Sunshift lightly touched her face, where a mouthplate once rested. The pink metal plate lay on the floor, dented and useless. She felt her mouth, which seemed to extend along one cheek—a scar from a wound, sloppily welded and ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. Feeling suddenly exposed, Sunshift covered the lower part of her face with her hands. Pain shot through her face. Her optics stung, ready to spark with tears. She curled away from Cadaver, frame shaking with memory, with terror. Her wings flinched backward, her posture crying  _ no more, no more, please don’t hurt me again _ .

Cadaver backed out of the room. If Sunshift had been capable of watching her, she would have noticed how her shoulders shook.  



End file.
